


i see before me a new horizon (the 'i'm from the future and i'm your baby' remix)

by gatsbyparty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Ouroboros Mix, language warning or whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:05:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatsbyparty/pseuds/gatsbyparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of being the Heiress' matesprit is learning to swim.<br/>This is a lot easier said than done in your case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i see before me a new horizon (the 'i'm from the future and i'm your baby' remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [secondhandact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondhandact/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Getting Along Swimmingly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/458379) by [secondhandact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondhandact/pseuds/secondhandact). 



> i hope....you like it.

Karkat Vantas: you (don’t talk to yourself, shithead), shorter than caste average (wrong fucking caste standards), round with muscle (fuck yes) and also maybe too many helpings of grub tots (delicious as shit), currently ankle deep in ocean water (hell no). Your matesprit is fluttering around in the water far farther out, easily over your head, slipping around like she’s some kind of goddamn ocean creature (she is, fuckload). She glints with bioluminescent ocean bits of who the fuck knows what, just under the surface, vanishing and reappearing in a shower of blue and green. The night sky arcs overhead, coming down to meet the horizon and trap you in the nightmare that is your life on the homeworld, as effectively as sticking a bug in an upturned glass to watch it suffocate.  
  
Your matesprit pops her head up, ocean bits glowing in the curves of her horns, and watches you with a wide grin. She’s beautiful, in the way that only a seadweller in the ocean can be. It’s clear that even if the ocean wasn’t made for her, she was for it: her eyes flash back moonlight, and her fins and the little spots across her face and shoulders are lit up like algae or whatever. She’s beckoning you out, but even if you were tempted, the chill of the water on your ankles is keeping you firmly against the sand way back out from the continental shelf.  
  
You don’t know how she got you out here, exactly, but there was a decent amount of making out, and then she’d manhandled you into swim shorts while you were still dazed and then hauled you out to shore. The sand is prickly under your feet and between your toes. The water feels like ice against your skin.  
  
“You’re being sealy,” Feferi calls, straightening up like she’s standing in ten and a half foot deep water. You’d always thought equatorial shallows would be warm and bright (to an iceblood, maybe).  
  
“I’m trying not to go into shock,” you shout back. “Pull me back ashore and my lower body is going to snap off.”  
  
“It’s not so bad, Karcrab!”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” you say under your breath. You work your toes a little deeper into the sand, consider inching forward. You decide against it: the salt will make your leg hair stick up weird when you dry off. "I can taste your lying with my olfactory glands."  
  
“I don’t reely think they’re supposed to do that.”  
  
You feel the faint distant throb of an oncoming headache. She drifts a little closer, with that weird magnetic grace that she completely loses when she’s on land. She’s striking and charismatic from the polished gold caps on her horn tips to her weirdly long toes (they’re practically fingers). You’re about as tall and suave as a root vegetable in a silk skirt.  
  
“I’m not about to beach myself, Karcrab,” she says teasingly, coming still closer. She’s nearing where she could put her toes on the seabed, which is still a good height over your all your breathing-capable parts. “That’s just shellfish of you! Come on out, I’ll float you up.”  
  
You shuffle in an inch or two, kicking spray up to your shorts, and shiver. She makes a low coaxing click in her throat, like an anxious lusus trying to herd a picky grub to a pipe wrapped in barbed wire so it can go fetch dinner. You let yourself be pulled towards the pipe wrapped in barbed wire, but you don’t grasp it; the water is now nearing the wrinkles of your knee caps. Truly, you are a paragon of trollish determination. A dull ache kindles and burns up and down your sides. Your thoracic muscles are grumbling in annoyance at your continued insistence on this ridiculous farce of a date.  
  
You inhale deeply, forcing yourself another step forward. The skin of your knees tingles and chills. She stops moving closer, and in the clear water you can see the brilliant glow of her legs crossing. Your watching turns into upright open-mouthed staring like some kind of desperate loser with binoculars watching someone change in a window.  
  
“Glubbing beautiful,” you say firmly, then kind of want to drown yourself. The tops of her cheeks go pink, like she's been out a bit too long past dawn and she's started to burn in the sun.  
  
"Not enough to get you in all the way, I guess," she says mournfully, but she's launching her vowels off into atmosphere so she's clearly not upset. You grunt, wading in to your hips and wrapping your arms around your waist. Your sides start to throb; your headache is like an orbital bombardment; but Feferi is grinning fit to light up the night. You’re nervous, with the ashamed anger that comes from feeling out of place, but you’re not frightened.  
  
She breaches the space between you, ducking down to kiss you one-two-three and then floats you off your feet and tilts you towards your back. You make the most ridiculous _hork_ sound in panic, drawing in water through your gills and spitting it back out and working yourself all up.  
  
“Oh god,” you say. You’ve managed to play them as weird-looking grubleg scars, just sealed over instead of hollowed in between your ribs. That goes flying the fuck off into the void. You’re just starting to thrash free to get to your sylladex when you see Feferi’s smiling, still touching you, with a kind of reverent fondness on her face.  
  
“You’re glubbing special, Crabcatch,” she says. “Look at that! No wonder you’re being so sealy. I canoe they weren't legs!”  
  
“Yeah, silly,” you say darkly. “That’s a hell of a lot cuter than paranoid as shit.”  
  
“You’re a shell of a lot cuter!”

She pats your cheek, just a shade redder than pale. Her fingers are colder than the water, leaving streaky glowing bits across your skin. It feels like a grenade goes off in your emotion squirter. She accepted your blood, and your snub horns, and your personality, and everything about you that she’s ever seen-but this felt like more. Gills felt momentous. You might have told her eventually, but quite likely not (keep it for your trap, water boy). And she’s not screaming. She’s not pulling your intestines out ass over jaw. Maybe you’ll survive tonight after all. Seconds pass. The algae on her horns glows a little brighter, or possibly you’re just going soft.   
  
“Shell,” she says. “Are you comin’ in or not?”  
  
She kisses you again, but you’ve already made up your mind. You kick once, hard, and bump into her, and she spins you out into an ocean glowing with stars and fairy lights. You trust her. This is worth what it costs you, the strength it takes to be open and to trust. You’d follow her all the way down if you had to.

**Author's Note:**

> 'canoe' is probably forcing it


End file.
